April 20, 2009

These photo's of the Common Merganser's were taken on Apr 11th on the Grand Traverse Bay. The first photo is of a female Common Merganser and the second and third photo are of males.

Common Merganser's are 22 to 27 inches in length. Males have a long whitish body, black back, green-black head. Bill and feet are red. Females are gray with a crested rufous head with sharp delineation to clean white chest.

March 05, 2009

Some more water fowl seen on the Chippewa River at the Chippewa Nature Center today. These were very active birds on the river this morning. They would fly upstream and ride the current of the river down stream. I'd lose sight of them and about 5 minutes later, there they were again. I was amazed at how close to the water they were flying. The male has the greenish/black color head and the female has the brown/rust color head.